This invention is concerned with a shoe support for supporting a lasted shoe comprising a last pin and a toe support by which respectively the heel and toe ends of a lasted shoe can be supported, the last pin being mounted on a last pin support for limited tilting movement about an axis extending lengthwise of a shoe supported as aforesaid.
Shoe supports of the aforementioned type but for use in the lasting of shoes (as opposed to for supporting lasted shoes) are well known: see e.g. U.S.-A4,4400,839, in which a shoe support is described for use in a heel seat lasting machine. It will of course be appreciated that the tilting facility for the last pin in this latter machine is to enable the heel seat of the shoe to accommodate to the plane of the wiper plates of the machine as said plates effect an inwiping movement over the heel seat of the shoe and to enable bedding pressure to be applied over the whole of the inwiped area; that is to say, the tilting movement allows the shoe to accommodate to the wiper plates during the machine operation.
In operating upon lasted shoes it is sometimes the case that the shoe has to be set in a particular orientation and at a particular height datum before the operation can take place. By way of example, in a side wall roughing operation control of the extent of the area which is roughed is critical, since if the area of rough is too large the appearance of the finished shoe will be unsightly, while if said area is insufficiently large inadequate bonding of the side wall of a sole unit to the side wall of the upper will result. Thus, where it is a question of an automatic side wall roughing machine, it will be appreciated, not only the heightwise setting of the shoe to general height datum positions at the toe and heel ends thereof but also accurate positioning of the side wall portions about the heel-to-toe line of the shoe are a pre-requisite to acceptable roughing. This is, moreover, especially the case where the automatic roughing is carried out under computer control using programmed instructions based upon the "style teaching" from a single model shoe and reliance is placed upon grading and data inversion for handling shoes of the same style but different sizes and opposite hand. One shoe support for use in such a machine is described in our U.S. Ser. No. 377,234 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,970,745, which shoe support relies upon a combination of a holddown, which extends across the width of the shoe in the heel seat region thereof, and a last pin which is mounted for limited pivotal movement about an axis extending lengthwise of the shoe supported as aforesaid, thus to enable the shoe bottom to be levelled appropriately to the holddown with a view to bringing successive shoes to a pre-determined position in relation to the roughing tool of the machine of which the shoe support forms part.
It will of course be appreciated that the lasting margin in the heel seat region of a lasted shoe is uneven because of the number of pleats formed in said margin in the heel seat lasting operation. As a consequence, it has been found that placing reliance upon levelling the shoe by engagement of the holddown with the lasting margin in the heel seat region does not necessarily lead to an acceptable result in all cases even so far as concerns the heel end of the shoe, and still less is this the case for the forepart region, which, it will be appreciated, is often the more important region from the point of view of the appearance of the finished shoe.